Forecast

DC Buzz: Blumenthal maxes on out Boeing Max 8 flap

WASHINGTON — Dating back to his days as Connecticut attorney general, Sen. Richard Blumenthal is no stranger to issues involving consumer protection and transportation safety.

So when the grim implications of Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash settled in, Blumenthal was out of the gate quickly to bang the drums for grounding the new Boeing Max 8 and its big sister the Max 9.

The FAA, under orders from President Donald Trump, finally agreed on Wednesday — the last major aviation power to do so after Canada capitulated and joined China, the U.K., Australia, Singapore and just about everyone else — in grounding the Max 8 and 9.

Aviation experts now have the time to determine what flaws in the pilot-control system might have caused the Ethiopian Airlines crash and an eerily similar one in October involving a Lion Air Max 8 that fell into the Java Sea after takeoff in Indonesia.

The grounding came not a moment too soon, as far as Blumenthal is concerned.

“These planes are tragedies waiting to happen,” he told me Tuesday night in a phone call.

Blumenthal is a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, so this kind of flag-raising goes with the territory. The aviation industry and regulatory types evidently suffer a collective stomach churn when he comes into view.

Blumenthal has been out front on an issue of more immediate importance to Connecticut — Positive Train Control, PTC, the futuristic satellite-transponder system that, when fully functional, will be able to stop runaway trains in (and on) their tracks.

After Trump announced the grounding Wednesday, Blumenthal offered some qualified praise.

“This step is right, but unacceptably overdue.” he said. “Our nation should be leading, not lagging, in air safety.”

Surprisingly, Blumenthal was one of just a handful of senators calling for a temporary halt. Why so few? Blumenthal said he didn’t blame colleagues. “There’s a lot going on up here” on Capitol Hill, he said.

Progressive policies

Lawmakers like AOC (Rep. Alexandria Cortex-Ocasio, D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have been the lightening rods for the progressive political direction of the Democratic-controlled House.

Even early on the presidential trail, you have Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand brandishing progressive street cred that just might be the ticket to the Democratic 2020 nomination.

But back in the bowels of the Capitol, it’s the pot-stirrers like Rep. Rosa DeLauro who are adding the meat and potatoes to the stew of progressive policymaking. If you believe in government as a positive force in people’s lives (or just plain more government), DeLauro has your favorite recipe covered.

As chair of the House Appropriations Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS, for short), DeLauro has her fingers on the pulse of spending for all or most of Democrats’ beloved social programs and laws.

It’s a combo Franklin D. Roosevelt could love. In just the past month or two, Labor-HHS has held hearings on private-college student rip-offs, predatory student-loan financing, administration attempts to derail the Affordable Care Act (yes, Obamacare), separation of children at the U.S.-Mexico border and the public-health dimensions of gun violence.

On Wednesday, they were set to grill HHS Secretary Alex Azar on his department’s budget, which got slashed 11.9 percent in Trump’s just-released spending plan.

“We will reject these cuts to health programs, medical research, public health, home heating assistance and so many others,” DeLauro told Azar. “Instead, we are going to invest in health, education and protections for the middle class.”

I think it can be said objectively that DeLauro’s agenda represents a 180 from Republicans when they ran the committee from 2011 to this past January. The subcommittee saw Obamacare as a ripe target, not something to prop up. And it looked for duplicative trims in the Education Department, in addition to de-fanging OSHA and the NLRB.

With the Senate in Republican hands, there’s no guarantee all of DeLauro’s progressive policy preferences will see the light of day. But DeLauro won’t have to look back on her career in Congress and feel like she just twiddled her thumbs while the other guys ruled the roost.